Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (cofounded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Find closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages at http://www.ted.com/translate.